My eyes adjusted. I made it to the light. Emily stood in front of me. She had learned how to control her embers. Her hand was on fire. She was staring at a dark passageway too afraid to go inside. In the darkness there was a sound. The same static you would hear on a dial up connection. Over and over it echoed. I clicked the sight on my M16. Adjusted and looked through the darkness with only Emily’s embers and the light from my gun. Slowly the world in front of me came into focus. Decaying plants. Broken glass bottles. At one time the Field Museum housed a collection of 30 million geological and biological specimens and cultural objects. We were looking for one.
The front of the museum was barricaded. Withered had somehow made their way into the city after the radiation became tolerable. No one was quite sure where they came from. We called them ‘hallows’ or withered without homes. There were also a handful of daemons that still stalked the streets. The ruins of the city were surrounded by barricades and a faux wall lined with turrets all supervised by the U.E.D. There was however a small resistance group that had taken refuge inside the museum. A group of scientists unable to leave their work behind. They found shelter underground. In the tunnels. Abandoned stations. All was going well for them until the daemons began picking them off one by one. They retreated into the East Wing. They turned the 3D theatre into a camp. Used dinosaur bones to secure the exits. The whole place looked like it had been re modeled by raiders. We were currently in the West wing near the Artifact conservation lab. The U.E.D had recently lost contact with the scientists here and decide it would be a good opportunity to send us on our first real mission together. Our primary mission was that we were there to recover an artifact. A Chinese sword that was said to have belonged to one of their Emperors. A sword that was said to have slain demons. Our secondary mission was to bring back all the samples of daemon DNA the resistance had collected and stored inside the DNA discovery center.
We broke off into two group. Emily, Todd and I were going after the sword while Michael, Jackson, Bran, and Brail went to the DNA lab.
I eyeballed the room. Parts of it were covered in poison ivy. Even with the radiation levels high and low nature was taking back the land. There was a dead guy at my feet. A young man no older then I was. He looked like he had been slashed to death. Probably an unarmed daemon. Even without weapons they were still beasts. Animals that stood like raptors with the strength of bears. You would have better chances of winning an oscar then surviving a one on one fight with one. I knew for certain now that Emily, Todd and I weren’t alone.
For a moment I tried to think about something else. I thought about the songs from a playlist we use to have. I thought about the lyrics from ‘Rocky Horror’ and ‘Grease’ how to make the perfect ice mocha frappe. I thought about pancakes and I hated pancakes. I tried to visualize I was somewhere else. I tried to play out the movies we had seen. The books I had read. I tried to forget for just a second that I was standing in a dark room being hunted by a creature from hell that wanted nothing more than to eat me.
“Over here I think I found something,” said Emily holding her hand above a large fire proof case.
“That’s it, that’s gotta be it,” said Todd who immediately began disassembling the case with his mind.
A sword appeared. The sword of Lü Dongbin.
“According to our information this should be the artifact the U.E.D were looking for. Apparently they are working on collecting all this hocus pocus. I guess anything helps,” said Emily.
Nate would later give us the full history of the artifact. How Lü Dongbin had been a scholar and poet during the Tang Dynasty (somewhere around c. 800.) who was worshipped by Taoists. He was one of the few whose status had been elevated to that of an immortal in the Chinese cultural sphere. He was the most famous of a group called the eight immortals and considered by many to be their leader. He was also apparently an alchemist whose wore a sword on his back capable of dispelling evil spirits and slaying daemons. That last bit there is what sparked the U.E.D’s interest.
“It’s highly possibly the daemons have been coming to Earth since the dawn of man, shaping our society, maybe even helping us advance. Doubtful but if true we might already have made weapons capable of hurting them,” said Todd holding the blade in his hands. He quickly used his gift to create a nice sachel for it and handed it over to me.
“You are the only one that lost their backpack, each of us already has a shit to carry,” he said smirking.
That’s right. I lost my backpack. The night before. We were running from withered. We barely made our escape as we found our way into the subway stations and followed markers left by the resistance. “Hope” with arrows pointed in one direction.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Anything else of value here?” asked Emily.
“Not that we need,” answered Todd.
“Anything cool?” she said again.
“Really?” said Todd.
“We’re still human and it’s not everyday we get to raid a museum in Chicago. There has to be something cool, some kind of souvenir we can take, I don’t really want to go find the gift shop but something small would be nice, this is also our first mission together you know,” she said smiling as the ember in her hand fanned out more and more lighting the room around us.
“First mission if you don’t count being kidnapped and lost in the cold woods for two weeks,” said Todd.
“You’re still mad about that,” she said smiling.
I stood there as the two continued to talk back and forth. Todd going on about how much he hated being lost in the woods and Emily making sly remarks about how lucky they were she was there and had to constantly start fires to keep everyone warm. While the two of them were bickering I found a case full of raptor fossils.
“Look at these,” I said breaking the glass with the butt of my rifle.
“Nice loot,” said Emily grabbing one of the raptor claws.
Todd grabbed another and I grabbed two. One for me. One for you.
The rest of the mission went well. We met Michael and the others at our rendezvous point on the roof and we were extracted by a VTOL where we made a quick stop at O’hare airport before making our way back to Alaska. We were exposed to a small amount of radiation but nothing drastic that would change our lives. That was the last time I would ever see my hometown. Not that there was much to see. So much of the city was in ruins. Even Wrigley field looked like a sunken crater. We didn’t find the resistance but we found the remains of their camp. It was likely that a group of daemons had set up shop somewhere in the surrounding area and had taken everyone before we got there. We asked the U.E.D to send a team in after us to try and save them but we never heard anything back. Casualties of war they were lucky they survived as long as they had.
________
“I have it!” said Nate standing up looking at the seven of us staring at the Lü Dongbin sword that hung on the wall of our freshly built barracks.
“You have what?” asked Michael.
“Well you know we’re a team, Every team needs a name, I have just figured out what ours is going to be!” he exclaimed.
“We don’t really need a team name, it’s bad enough most of us have code names,” said Emily.
“Doesn’t matter, we are going to need to call ourselves something when we ship off on the Perseverance and I know exactly what we will be called,” he said again proudly.
“Ok, what then? Tell me fearless leader what is our team name?” I jokingly asked.
“Oh I’m not the leader, that job will fall to either you or your brother, SORRY I meant Vee’s brother. The two of you are just so close these days it’s easy to forget,” he said. I in no way wanted that job but Nate was right. He might be the brains but I was the one that could slow time and assess certain situations. Ed himself had been telling me that since I arrived. A part of learning to use my gift was learning to lead others with it. All in all it was simple I just have to enter a
room and point. It had been almost an entire five years. Five years since you fell into the dreaming. Four years since the first powers emerged along with the withered. Three years since the invasion. Four years since I went back into the ruins of Chicago. Five years. Two years longer then we had even known one another. I had spent more time now protecting you then actually being with you. More time with your brother then with you. I couldn’t help but wonder.You slept in stasis courtesy of Khione not aging a day. Your body would be as healthy as you left it. They were taking better care of you then I or Michael ever could have. Would you would even recognize me anymore. Would you still even want to be with me after everything that has happened?
I looked over at Michael, Todd, Emily, Bran, Blair, and Jackson then finally at Nate. “We are the eight immortals!” he smiled.
**
*The eight immortals. A group of legendary xian in Chinese mythology whose powers could be transferred to special tools and weapons (none of which we really had). Capable of giving life and destroying evil (two things we were also not very good at).
**Worst fucking team name ever.
Perseverance
“So what does the Perseverance look like?” asked Emily.
“Like a large sphere, probably with really gigantic engines jutting out of it,” answered Michael.
“So have any of you been to space before?” she asked laughing.
Nate looked around the room and at Emily anxiously, “It’s important to note that any surface area on the Perseverance were to be hit could lead to damaged systems and loss of area. Surface area is NOT good so please please lets hope for the love of God that it’s not a large sphere or even anything large. The smaller it is the stealthier we can be. We just need to maximize volume. There is what a thousand of us going?”
“Two thousand, for every one of us there is a sleeper coming aboard as well so there are at least two thousand,” I said.
“Two thousand great, plus a pilot, plus other military, plus Ed. We are so fucked,” said Nate.
“Look your the genius weren’t you one of the ones they had working on this project?” said Michael annoyed at Nate’s anxiousness.
“No they had been working on this since the 1940s. The Philadelphia Experiment, the Montauk Project, Area 51 and 52 all leading up to the development of the EmDrive,” he replied, “we also better hope we are not close to any of the engines, the radiation and exhaust alone will kill us after we make get onboard.”
“Actually one of the other teams has a girl that has the power to dissolve radiation, she’s going to be staying with the ship and apparently they developed some kind of preventative medicine out of her blood. They will probably be injecting us with it soon,” said Michael laughing, “for once I knew more then you.”
“That is a lie! There is no such thing as an optimal space fighter. In space there is no line of sight, no rules, not too mention God only knows what kind of budget cuts were made to get this thing operational as quickly as possible. I doubt they have even done any test runs,” squabbled Nate.
“Actually we have been doing tests for over two years now and even a few before that,” it was Ed that said it walking in on the conversation at hand.
We were inside another VTOL, albeit this one a bit more futuristic then others. We were flying away from our barrack in Alaska. The home we had loved to hate. We were in the air heading towards flying over the ocean. At least that was the direction we were heading when we took off. Normally it was possible to feel when the VTOL turned or swayed. It felt like we had been traveling in a straight line forever.
“There is the whole pesky life support thing how the hell are we all going to breathe, hell how are we even suppose to fight!” said Nate.
“Easy plenty of mobility in your suits,” said Emily. We were all wearing new combat gear. Bullet proof body armor covered in more bullet proof black camp pants and black jackets that felt like they were made of leather. Each of our outfits had small variations. Small things that helped make them our own. We kind of looked like a biker gang ready to ride.
“You must be losing your mind. The sleepers are going to be in stasis, courtesy of Khione Industries. They won’t be using up any of your air don’t worry. As far as fighting most of that will take place on their ship or on one of Titan’s moons. Whichever one we can get the bastards to crash on,” said Ed.
“We know nothing about the atmosphere inside their ships and how the hell are we even going to get there!” asked Emily now just as nervous.
“They breathe oxygen, they bleed and we got a good idea of what kills them thanks to their own technology and we know that the fields around their ship put off a type of Earth like atmosphere. You may not be able to breathe without a respirator and you may feel a bit sick but the closer you are too their ship the closer you are to home. Even temperature wise just standing on their hull would be like standing in northern Canada. Don’t worry there won’t be any G’s pulling at your body either. Getting from the Perseverance to their ship is going to be a walk in the park just let the pilots handle the nasty work they’ll make sure that you don’t die in any truly disgusting ways. Least not before the fight.” Ed was finished. All of us had been nervous. We knew the plan. We were taking the Perseverance into battle. The daemon ship was drifting towards Saturn. To be more specific it was drifting very close to Saturn’s moon, Titan. The U.E.D would fire everything it had at the daemons sphere and then we would drill our way into the side with our own dropships. That’s where we would come in. We were the cogs that would wreck the machine. Our mission was to do as much damage as possible until the daemon ship falls and burns inside the atmosphere of Saturn or crash lands on Titan.
“And as far as how we are getting there. Well you all are about to find out,” Ed laughed. We were all sitting inside an experimental ship. It looked like a VTOL fused with the space shuttle Discovery. We weren’t flying straight up. We were flying upward at an angle. As soon as Ed said those words we felt the ship begin to shake.
“Just a little turbulence,” he said.
The experimental ship had no windows. For all we knew we were being flown on another mission. None of us knew were the Perseverance was or even what it was. Aside from being a starship. Not even Nate knew anything about it other then it was equipped with an EmDrive. We had sent the first ship, the one filled with drones towards the daemons in a similar fashion. None of that stopped us from using our imagination. We had ideas. We imagined a huge cruiser sitting in the ocean. Something like a battle cruiser that would rise up and into space.
At that moment the ship began to shake more and more for several minutes. For me it felt like a lifetime. I remember once we were on an airplane. I hated flying. I had to have several drinks just to stop thinking about the fact that I was sitting strapped down in a long rectangular box of death. What happened next was not my finest moment. I hurled up in front of the others. As I blew chunks of the meal I had only a few hours before. Chunks of digested meant, potatoes, and of course fucking corn. All of it spread out in front of me floating in the air. At that same moment I rose from my seat. We had entered orbit around Earth. No gravity. It was an incredible feeling. Something even now I’m not sure how to describe properly. It was surreal. I felt my weight drift away. I felt sick. Very sick. They never show them get sick in the movies. I wasn’t the only one. Apparently Ed, who had not had anything to eat that day was the only one not in complete shock and awe. He was the only one not feeling vertigo.
Emily started to light up. Her body began to glow red. I could see it in her eye. The fire. She was about to go supernova and take all of us with her. She was afraid, she was tired, she was sick. Ed rushed over towards her floating through the air with a small syringe and plunged it into the side of her neck. Her hands were catching ablaze when she stared at him in shock. Did he kill her? No. She was knocked unconscious.
“Sedative, anyone else?” he said in a completely serious tone.
�
�Told you we’re all going to die,” said Nate.
“When we get on the Perseverance we’ll be spinning. The ship will have a kind of artificial gravity. It will feel strange at first but it won’t be any different then Earth once you get use to it,” said Ed looking at Nate.
“I’ll take a hit,” said Jackson. Apparently the entire trip had been messing with his ears. Out of all of us he was the only one that realized we had been flying upwards.
“So is it then we’re on our way to space,” said Todd.
I stood by and listened to Ed speak for the next several minutes. I can’t remember every word he said but I caught the gist of it. The VTOL we were in had onboard an experimental EmDrive itself. We were going to be approaching the dark side of the moon in less than six hours. If there were less of us onboard with less luggage we would have been there in four. Already several sails had opened up in front of us. Pushed by a quantum vacuum particles (the quantum state with the lowest possible energy) or “warp bubbles” as some like to call them (also helps we have an extra push derived by solar panels and a small nuclear reactor we were sitting on top of) and directing it with magnetic fields (built into the sails) to push us in the opposite direction. In other words we were defying the laws of physics.
Sleepers (Convergence Book 1) Page 4